mettelus

I had to look on a PC to view that website because the request to add cookies masked out the site on mobile, so the "shady gypsy" comment stood out right away for me! Those prices are a bit over the top.

I actually like "scalloped" boards as well, but I achieve this via the tallest bass frets rather than touching the board. They do require a bit more finesse to play because finger pressure alone will cause slight bends and this is more dramatic the lighter the string gauge is. The range makes more sense for the design now, but when I sit back and think, "Would I ever actually use that though?" the answer is no. The extended fretboard is the only feature unique to that guitar (other than price) that cannot be easily replicated with custom work.

As far as the LP/Strat combo, I posted the Super Seven Switching setup I put into my main on the old forum around 2012 (I cannot actually find THAT post, but the one where I added the phase switch is searchable for some reason, and I modified what was in that "inspiration" link quite a bit). I am not a fan of active electronics at all, so went with the hottest/cleanest PUPs on the market at the time (DiMarzio D Activator Bridge (DP220)/Neck (DP219)), and the switching allows for split coils as well as parallel/series/phase between the neck and bridge. The tones then come from lowering volumes for different combinations, and it has almost an E-Bow effect for certain settings and FX (I got it to sound like bagpipes once and thought that was funny as hell, so saved that preset on an old pedal board). I was vindicated for my choices when I sent it to be PLEK'd, since the luthier came back and asked "Are those active pickups? I plugged that in and it damn near blew my head off with settings I used for LPs." The only caveat to that switch arrangement is that you must have humbuckers that expose all 4 wires (both coils) with enough leads to get the coil splits... some are pre-potted in series with only the 2 wires from that series chain exposed and won't work.

Definitely research this in more detail before jumping in and running those tapes. Because of the age, how it was stored can play heavily into degradation of the tape. There are companies (and some forum members I have seen over the years) that specialize in these services. If you do not have the equipment yourself to run the tape, that may be a better option to look into since they would have more experience on the care and recovery of specific media prior to doing the digitizing run.

+1 to the above. Another thing to keep in mind is that backwards compatibility is not always possible with a few new features that older versions cannot recognize (Aux Tracks/Patch Points being one of them). That being said, a couple things to consider:

1. You can still install SONAR 7 on the new machine. There are a lot of new features and layout changes since SONAR 7, so having that version installed may give you a comfort zone while learning the newer version.
2. Whenever opening an older SONAR file in a newer software version, immediately save it as a new name (with version in the title helps to keep track). This way the original file is always left intact should you want/need to back out to an older version. It is sometimes easier to finish projects with the version they started in if almost finished, but you can always transfer them forward (just sometimes not backwards).

You should be able to simply re-register TTS-1 if it is already installed. I see you had posted this same issue before, so for future reference, the steps in this post by bitflipper are all you should need to do if it recurs.

Every time there is an acquisition, the bean counters on the buying side need to see growth. For a main product with updates every 2 years for less than a year subscription, it may get more foul going forward for the version releases. A lot of these subscriptions I simply take as acknowledgement that a product is mature and reached the point of diminishing returns. 

16 hours ago, bitflipper said:

They charged me $500 for a resistor.

I got the "wow" reaction from this as well. The only two resistors I know of are for the blower motor and cooling fan, and neither of them would take 5 labor hours to replace.

It does remind me of a funny story where a specialist came in to troubleshoot a complex piece of equipment and marked the location with an "X" with a piece of chalk so the company could expedite repairs. He billed them $50,000, to which they got irate and wanted an itemized bill. He promptly sent them back their request which read, "One piece of chalk - $1. Knowing where to put the mark - $49,999." I guess he didn't tax them, so they should have considered themselves lucky.

On 7/31/2023 at 4:09 PM, Bapu said:

And hand (deep) in your pocketbook too!

A lot of vintage gear is simplistic by today's standards, so that comes across as more brand name than amp to me. @DeeringAmps had mentioned he is slowing down on amp work, but it made me think he could probably build that for less, but he is also in tune with what the costs are these days.

2 hours ago, Larioso said:

There is a value in configuration file, preferences, about setting the dropout time limit to watch out for.

DropoutMsec=250 is default.

 

Try increasing it....

That one is under Preferences->Audio->Configuration File

Another one to consider is bumping up the Playback and Record Buffers Sizes under Preferences->Audio->Sync and Caching. Depending how complex your project is, there may also be hurdles pulling/writing from media, especially if you upped the bit-depth.

Once you have passed the tempo map to the DAW, you can remove the RegionFX to free up being able to do more surgical edits on the audio (as needed). That step of moving the tempo map to the DAW hasn't affected the file's audio and you have what you needed from the BIG RegionFX once the DAW has the map for you. I try not to save project files with massive RegionFX active as it embeds the "separations" data into the project file itself; but once you get into tweaking audio, rendering or not can come down to personal preference and computer resources (less noticeable when the edits are surgical and leaving them active).

LOL, I expect this thread to get vaporized, but will see.

1 minute ago, 57Gregy said:

I doubt I'll ever be modifying any guitar, so that is not an issue.

That may be a reason to consider getting one in a store. They can be cleaned up very nicely and you will at least KNOW what you are getting. Online stuff can very much be hit-or-miss, unless you are buying from a good source that will check that before sending it (like Sweetwater).

There are certainly a lot of diverse instruments and variations out there. Every so often it is fun to play around with world instrument libraries (especially the ones which are locked to the actual scales). It is much easier to understand the music when you get a feel for the instrument. It gives insight at least, but the talent required to actually play some of those instruments IRL is impressive. VSTis in that regard are sorta cheesy, since they are all converted to "piano."

There are a few VSTis that still require an ASIO output too work in stand-alone mode, but most of them have shifted over to a "Windows Audio" option. I did keep ASIO4ALL loaded for a while just for those VSTis in stand-alone mode, but finally shifted to running them inside a DAW even just to screw around.

Every post that bot makes has special characters in the title, specifically "<<" and ">>" are used a lot. I am not sure how complex the filtering system is, but another thing is only Lars would be posting once per minute (or faster), so a temporary block on any account that does that would also catch this bot before it can flood.

13 hours ago, 57Gregy said:

I like the smaller size of the 339 versus the 335 (I'm not a big person) but over the years I have read some folks here saying they were 'crap' or words to that effect. Why? I didn't notice any difference from the 335 (Epiphones, not Gibsons). 

The only real difference I have read is that the body on 339's resonates more focused on mid-range due to its smaller size. I have never played one, but that can be compensated with EQ.

I have bought a few guitars online and as long at the bridge and truss rod are easily adjustable and you know how to set them up properly, they can save a lot of money. The electronics can be hit or miss (especially for the pots), so I always make the assumption I will need to replace electronics. That being said, the pots in the 335/339s are the biggest PITA to swap out (you literally want to run a few feet of heavy thread with the pot when you pull it so you can get the new one to feed back into place easily). The bridge pickup I typically replace, and I had one where the bridge was pot metal, so replaced that with a Wilkinson Locking Roller Bridge. It is about $100 more to replace all those parts. Tapping/dressing frets is another possibility, and the nut might need to be filed down (I have noticed the nuts are way high from some places for some reason, but posted a quick fix for that here (very bottom of that post)).

All that said... besides the pots, another quirk with the 335s is that they are head-heavy, so want to floor dive when standing up. There are straps which have enough friction to counter this, or you can simply run a string to the peg side of the nut rather than use the neck joint strap mount with them.

Part of it is browser and real estate on mobiles. There are dev apps that will let you see desktop/mobile/tablet renderings side by side as changes are made, but not sure if you can edit in that environment for a canned package.

Please check what I said previously again. Rendering is what not to do if you have adjusted the tempo within Melodyne. That video snippet is only 40 seconds long and marked at those two steps. Adjusting tempo markers in Melodyne doesn't affect audio, so the render is simply passing the original audio to the tempo track rather than the edits you made.

9 hours ago, Billy86 said:

3. I go into Note Edit mode  in Melodyne and open the Tempo Editor. Great.

4. I get things all set up. A tweak here, a tweak there if things drift off beat. The song plays great with the Melodyne metronome. Everything is on a mapped beat. The tempo map grooves with the song.  Great. All set.

Check out this video at roughly the 10:40-11:20 part. Melodyne doesn't "assign" the tempo to the file it is using until you switch out of Note Assignment Mode into another (Track Mode in the video). From there it is actually not rendered before dragging that RegionFX into the timeline (which basically copy/pastes the Melodyne info into the DAW). I have not tried this in CbB, but it should be the same mechanics as in the video.

Any driver reactivating itself is still present in the system. Windows does a sweep on driver directories and will "recover" them if present on the machine. Some are pests and reinstalled just by running the app they are associated with, others can be calls to msi files associated with them. The disabling option mentioned a few times now is the best method to resolve these. I have 6 or 7 audio drivers on my machine disabled (I only use 2). Installed or not, Windows is not going to use or expose drivers when disabled.

3 hours ago, sjoens said:

phone & tablet... once logged in you can never leave....

Welcome to the Hotel Cakewalk Forum...

This has come up from time to time as a feature request. Exception handling within programs requires extra coding, but will identify and prevent crashes. It also can give detailed feedback via the program itself rather than make it guess work or put it on the user. I forget which plugin it was now (or even the host... I think it was doing video), but I actually got a pop-up from that host years ago that said "[X plugin] tried to perform an illegal operation and has been blacklisted." It didn't give more detail than that unfortunately (would need more detail than that to make it useful), but the host didn't crash or scan that plugin again.

On 7/27/2023 at 12:24 PM, John Balich said:

i have plugged in my alesis midi keyboard.  Midi out to midi in on my komplete audio interface.

Rewind for a second here, please. Is your Alesis a USB cable connection (I am assuming it is, rather than a 5-pin DIN connection)? If so, there is no reason not to plug that directly into your computer that comes to mind. For the older 5-pin connections, that was a reason to get an audio interface with those connectors, but it carried the possibility of nerfing keyboard features. If that Alesis plugs directly into the computer via USB, that is what you want (and you will see all the functionality of the keyboard). An audio interface is only needed to get audio in and out, not MIDI. MIDI can go in separately, get processed and come out as audio.

If running MIDI through an interface, it is pretty much a pass-through. The interface will be visible to the DAW, and see the MIDI passing through it there, but again the functionality may be limited.

NVIDIA can be taken care of when installing drivers. Always do a custom install and only select the graphics drivers and PhysX options, then check "perform a clean installation" at the bottom prior to the install. In addition to the HD audio, the "GeForce Experience" app does a lot of background processes that will interfere with a DAW. A clean installation with the above options checked should show those not present when it finishes.

There are very few entities (companies or otherwise) that police themselves without some underlying self-gain swaying their ethics. The OP really opens a massive can of worms, but my biggest concern has always been that bad actors love to breach companies with large repositories (and not so they can spam you). Google designed a massive censorship vehicle as its "price" for doing business with China, and didn't pull out until they realized they had been hacked. Anything put on the internet is permanent public record, so always keep that in mind.

Casio has a model series with keys that light up (those keys are not weighted IIRC), and there are also digital pianos specifically geared for learning (Yamaha has a few nice ones, but they are more designed to be set up in one spot and heavy (and not cheap)). If you have a Guitar Center anywhere close, it is probably better to take a jaunt there to see what options are available in a side-by-side scenario. If you are moving it back and forth you definitely want to consider weight and durability (or even a nice, sturdy "Z-style stand with casters" so you can simply roll it back and forth at will). With cats, it is also recommended to get a couple yards of thick fabric off a discount rack someplace to drape over it when not in use (this will keep out not only the hairs, but keyboards can also collect dust between the keys that is hard to clean). If your intent is to eventually get a piano, weighted keys would be preferred, but that will also add weight to the unit (under the sofa might become tedious, hence a stand instead). If you are ever planning to use it to record into a DAW, the MIDI capabilities are something to consider as well.

All that said, if you are just starting out, it would be better to go with something simple and see if you take to playing it. That way if it ends up being forgotten under the sofa it won't be a massive issue, but if you take to it like a duck to water, you can always upgrade to something better later (and know exactly what you want/need when you do). The 61-key Casios are fairly inexpensive and light-weight, but there are a lot of options available (why checking out a Guitar Center will help a lot to put things in perspective for you).